Question: do you harm the zebrafish ? If so why do you do it and would not it be better to look after them?

Alberto Lapedriza answered on 21 Jun 2013:

Zebrafish is a protected animal under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, which regulates the use of laboratory animals in the UK. Therefore, to work with them we need a licence from the Home Office that specifies the experiments we can and cannot do with the zebrafish in the lab.

For my research I’m working with zebrafish embryos, and I only use the adults to produce embryos. Therefore, the adults don’t suffer any harm at all, as the only thing we do with them is putting males and females together to lay embryos.

We do all the experiments with the embryos following the Home Office guidance and rules to minimise the harm we do to them. Unfortunately we cannot avoid all harm, but we work very carefully to avoid harming them unnecessarily.